« May 6, 2007 - May 12, 2007 | Main | May 20, 2007 - May 26, 2007 » May 13, 2007 - May 19, 2007 ArchivesMay 13, 2007Things I Don't BelieveSometimes when your theory doesn't fit the data, you change the theory. Other times, you need to reject the data. For example, I simply don't believe that John Edwards would beat Rudy Giuliani in Kentucky or that Giuliani would beat Barack Obama in Massachusetts. UPDATE: It should be said, though, that one can't dismiss out of hand the possibility that Giuliani would win Democratic strongholds like New York and New Jersey. SCIRI Dumps KhameiniIt seems that the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq will no longer be claiming to take guidance from Ali Khameini, Supreme Leader of Iran, and instead follow the lead of Ali Sistani of Iraq. Juan Cole has analysis and I'll defer to him on the ins-and-outs of intra-Shiite politics. More structurally, I think you're seeing here simply that it's hard to exert control trans-nationally. When Iraqi Shiites are politically weak, such Iraqi Shiite organizations that exist are heavily dependent on Iranian support and thus prone to doing things like recognizing the lead to accept spiritual guidance from Iran's cleric-politicians. As they gain more of a power base in Iraq, it's natural for these same Iraqi Shiite leaders to start discovering Iraqi nationalism. That Sistani does not, in practice, seem to be all that interested in directing day-to-day Iraqi politics has to make him an especially desirable "spiritual leader" for the SCIRI leadership. Corners TurnedRobert Farley runs some numbers: "Between March 2003 and August 2006, there was never a period in Iraq in which Coalition casualties exceeded 2.5/day for each of three consecutive months." No Disclosure?ABC News headline: "No Disclosure: Presidential Candidates Defy Tradition, Refuse to Release Taxes Since Watergate, Only Clinton Refused to Release Income Information."
One could be forgiven based on that headline and photo for assuming that, say, Barack Obama hasn't released his tax information. But as Mark Kleiman points out, the twelfth (!) graf of the piece mentions that "as the 2008 election draws near, the only top-tier candidate who has committed to releasing his 1040 forms is Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who already made public the return he filed this year." I tend to think that financial disclosure for presidential candidates (as opposed to, say, House candidates where I'd really like to know) is relatively unimportant since I think it's safe to assume that at this point in their career these are all people motivated much more by lust for power than by greed. The ins-and-outs of John Edwards' brief career in the financial services industry don't have an obvious relevance to whether or not he'd be a good president unless you take the view (apparently popular in the press) that one shouldn't be allowed to advocate for the interests of poor people without first taking a personal vow of poverty. That said, if you're going to do the story and make a big deal about it, you should do the story properly. WhinersI have to say that while pre-series I'd been hoping for a somewhat unlikely Suns win against San Antonio, I've found Phoenix's level of whining about the Spurs' style of play over the past few days to be pretty off-putting. Maybe they'd rather head off for summer vacation instead of needing to suffer through two more series in their quest for a title. Y FilesCall me a snob if you'd like, but there's something fascinating about the idea of a newspaper so small towney that it's prepared to report on a MetLife blimp coming to town: The airship was making its way from Kansas City to Baltimore where it will appear at next weekends Preakness horse race. Crew chief Cory Yglesias said the airship can travel for seven to eight hours before it needs to refuel. Exciting! How Long Does The Whip Snap?Ever-eager to solidify my standing as a "Whippersnapper who's kind of Fogeyish," I'll take Mickey Kaus' assignment on the whippersnapper factor in the blogosphere. And, even better, I'll do it bullet-point style: Casualty Rates
With thanks to Nick Beaudrot, a chart shedding a bit more light on the casualty rate issue. "As measured by coalition deaths per day, we are now in the most violent twelve-month stretch of the four year occupation of Iraq," he comments, "However, as measured by injuries per day, things are not quite as bad as the were for the period between April of 2004 and March of 2005, a period that includes the intial outrage at Abu Gharib, rising violence before the '04 election, and the post-election flattening of Fallujah." What?TNT's NBA studio team is excellent, but I swear to God I just heard Kenny Smith argue that Spiderman 3 was better than Spiderman 2 but "1 was the best." I liked 3 better than most, but that's insane; I don't believe he's even seen the movies, nobody could possibly think that. MSM RulesCBS officially doesn't care that one of its contributors is a liar; they say they hired him because a rival network hired Glenn Beck, so I guess they decided they needed a fool of their own. This is the kind of thing that makes it a little hard to take seriously the notion that the news biz was all about the unadorned pursuit of truth until bloggers ruined everything. 90s Nostalgia BloggingRancid, "Time Bomb." This song isn't really Rancid's best work, but I think it was their biggest hit of the nineties; and if it wasn't, I like it better than "Ruby Soho." In high school, my friends and I managed to rack up an absurd ratio of time spent discussing the need to acquire white shoes (we all actually had black coats and hats) to time spent actually seeking white shoes. I also think it was precisely because of listening to this tune that I came to know what "running numbers" entailed. May 14, 2007Hagel-Bloomberg?The hinting around sure is getting heavy-handed. I'm not sure how much sense he's really making, though. "I am not happy with the Republican Party today," Hagel said. "It's been hijacked by a group of single-minded almost isolationists, insulationists, power-projectors." This doesn't really strike me as what you'd call a coherent critique of the reigning orthodoxy, though it certainly does seem to me like Hagel would be better than your average Republican on these issues. On the other hand, it would be extremely hard to reconcile Chuck Hagel's longstanding positions on the issues with Bloomberg's existing political profile and it doesn't seem like either of these guys is especially inclined to run on the bottom of a ticket. Probably both of them are just wasting time and enjoying the attention speculation brings. The War PartyRoss takes a look at what really matters to the GOP base: When asked to name the issue they care most about, 31 percent of Republican voters picked the War in Iraq, another 17 percent picked terrorism, and another 8 percent picked "foreign policy." More potential GOP primary voters picked Iraq, in particular, than picked the economy, health care, education, abortion, and immigration combined. As a result, Republicans have no choice but to actually compete with one another to adhere ever-more-tightly to GOP orthodoxy on the party's single weakest issue. It seems to me that a lot of folks in Democratic circles are thinking of this dynamic primarily as an opportunity to run a campaign focused on domestic issues -- seizing advantage of Republican weakness to shift the conversation to friendlier terrain -- but I see it as more of an opportunity (if the party chooses to seize it) to directly challenge the Republicans on security. Stop DiggingMSM-bashing aside, I sure am glad the Washington Post published this Steven Mufson article about how at the same time policymakers are increasingly talking about curbing carbon emissions, the federal government is giving out big subsidies for the construction of new coal plants under the auspices of subsidized rural electric cooperatives. This is exactly the sort of thing you tend not to see in the papers because it isn't "news," but it's both true and important so people ought to read about it. Strange New RespectJim Henley and Scott Lemieux are feeling it for Paul Bremer after reading his Washington Post self-defense article. Personally, my sympathy for Bremer goes down whenever he publishes anything. I think Bremer has essentially been turned into a scapegoat for very broad intellectual errors and policy mistakes that affected a wide swathe of the American elite from 2002-2005. Rather than acknowledge that this is what happened; that certain stupendously wrong ideas gained widespread adherence in the two years after 9/11, there's been an enormous willingness to believe that, hey, no, everything's fine, it's just that Paul Bremer and Donald Rumsfeld are really dumb. The trouble with trying to defend Bremer from this unfair position, however, is that every time he opens his mouth he's refusing to adopt the only really viable defense he has -- that he was the fall guy for a doomed enterprise. It's not that disbanding the Iraqi Army wasn't an error, it's just that having done things the other way 'round wouldn't have produced the desired unified, democratic, and yet willing to be used as a platform for US power-projection throughout the region Iraq that Bremer was supposed to produce. He wound up making pro-chaos decisions because the country had, as a matter of national policy, chosen to adopt unrealistic and incoherent -- yet strangely vague -- war aims. The only real blunder Bremer made was agreeing to take the job under those circumstances. Oenophiles Beware!... normal people find you kind of annoying. IP and TradeJames Surowiecki has a really solid piece in The New Yorker about exporting American patent and copyright law as a key element of trade policy: Our recent free-trade agreement with South Korea is a good example. Most of the deal is concerned with lowering tariffs, opening markets to competition, and the like, but an important chunk has nothing to do with free trade at all. Instead, it requires South Korea to rewrite its rules on intellectual property, or I.P.—the rules that deal with patents, copyright, and so on. He goes on to explain in a calm and restrained tone I couldn't personally manage to muster that this is a bad idea, before noting that "The great irony is that the U.S. economy in its early years was built in large part on a lax attitude toward intellectual-property rights and enforcement." Yes. Though one should say that this isn't merely ironic, the U.S. had weak IP when it was a less-developed country because that's the correct set of policies for such a country to have. American IP rules are too strong for America's own good, and way too strong for the developing world. Incidentally, this is why even though I still think including labor and environmental standards in trade deals isn't a very good idea, I don't get indignant about these kind of demands from labor groups the way I used to. The IP-related conditionality we're currently engaged in is much worse than that; if we could somehow swap it out in favor of labor standards, that would be a change for the better. Realistically, though, we're more likely to wind up with the worst of both worlds. Monday Bagel BloggingLike many a New Yorker transplanted to the Washington, DC area, I've spent a fair amount of time bemoaning the lack of high-quality bagel options in this town. Well, yesterday my friend Tom kindly brought a few of Bodo's Bagels over to our house from Charlottesville and while my keen bagel sense has probably eroded thanks to years of atrophy, I have to say that they're . . . pretty darn good. As they boast here: We boil our bagels just before baking, per New York style. Quite so. And now for my modest proposal. American Jews are well-known for our proclivities for philanthropical activities. It seems to me that what we need to do is set up a bagel foundation or something that could finance the establishment of traditional bagel-making facilities America's top metro areas. Here in DC we have a Museum of American Jewish Military History which, frankly, nobody cares about. A Society for the Preservation of Decent Bagels would do the world much more good. It's The War, StupidChris Cillizza writes up an interesting Third Way study aiming to understand the demographic and opinion profile of the voters who backed Democrats in 2006 but not in 2004. This turns out to be a fairly Third Way-ish group of people -- whiter, maler, and richer than average. What's interesting, is that they say Dems won these people over not primarily by moving right on economics or on culture, but on the strength of hostility to the Iraq War. To me, at least, this continues to be the key to the 2008 election; Democrats need to put forward a credible national security message that doesn't let the GOP nominee weasel away from things and just distance himself from Bush personally. The opposition party needs to be able to make the case that Iraq has turned out disastrously because it was the consequence of a disastrous strategy for the country, a strategy Republicans favor and that Democrats propose to replace with a different, better strategy. Meanwhile, In ZagrebFar and away the best feature on the Cato @ Liberty blog is Daniel Mitchell's relentlessly dishonest propagandizing on behalf of the flat tax, conducted primarily through random cherry-picking of Eastern European economic statistics. Today, though, things hit a snag as Mitchell uncovers this tale of an Austrian economist telling Croatians that their current tax status quo resembles Austria's and that they should stick with it. Mitchell is naturally outraged that anyone would ignore the lessons of, say, the Bulgarian miracle: Too bad nobody asked Professor Widhal why Croatia should seek to have a tax system similar to Austria’s. Unless, of course, Croatia wants to stumble along with growth of 1 percent yearly while its flat-tax neighbors grow by 5 percent annually. But look here -- Croatia's not growing at 1 percent. It's been growing at . . . a bit less than five percent for years, just like loads of other Eastern European countries. It's almost as if the cause of high growth levels in these states is that the Communist legacy left them poor (small base allows for fast growth) but relatively well-endowed in terms of human capital and thus poised for fairly rapid growth after making the transition away from Communism. The flat tax has pretty much nothing to do with it. Obama on Affirmative ActionObviously, one concern people have with Barack Obama's candidacy is that they worry that a black man faces intrinsic electoral problems. I would say that the flipside of this is that an African-American Democrat probably has more latitude to say sensible things about affirmative action (via Jon Chait who sees this as part of a growing populist trend in Obama's rhetoric) that would get a white candidate in hot water with supporters he's counting on. How Dare They?!?!?Tom Grubisich's tirade against internet pseudonymity strikes me as primarily just another example of Delicate Flower Syndrome. If Grubisich had cared to do any "fact-checking," "research," "reporting" or any of the other things good journalists are known for he would have recalled, as did Julian Sanchez, that there's a very long and distinguished trend of pseudonymous political commentary in this country and around the world that has nothing in particular to do with the internet. Instead, we just get this: In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of the civic problem-solving process. But on the Internet, Mr. anticrat424 is continually elevated to the podium, where he can have his angriest thoughts amplified through cyberspace as often as he wishes. He can call people the vilest names and that hate-mongering, too, will be amplified for all the world to see. This, too, is wrong. On the internet, everyone gets a chance to speak, but there's no guarantee you'll be listened to. If people are "amplifying" anticrat424's thoughts by linking to them, quoting him, etc., that's going to be either because he's saying things that people think make sense. People might quote anticrat424 for the purpose of refuting him but that, again, presupposes that some people are taking him seriously. And, of course, over time your handle gets a reputation -- good, bad, or mixed -- just like a name in real life. Personally, I'm a curious person and do tend to prefer to know as much as possible about the people I read. Even here, though, knowing the name (as opposed to, say, something about the writer's job and general situation in life) isn't necessarily all that enlightening. What's really bothering Grubisich, though, isn't the lack of names but rather the fact that people are being mean to Grubisich and to people Grubisich likes. He thinks, correctly, that if everyone had to use their own name a lot of people might be afraid to speak their minds. Once again, I'm left to wonder why so many journalists think that if they could make the mean comments go away this would somehow make the bad thoughts disappear as well. I don't like the iidea of people hating my work, but insofar as people think I'm wrong about stuff I'd just as soon know what think I'm wrong about. Yes, He's a Crappy World Bank PresidentSure, sure Paul Wolfowitz is guilty of some low-grade corruption, but isn't the truth of the matter that New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz is right that "the real Wolfowitz scandal . . . is how Wolfowitz is being treated by his slimy critics," that he was doing good work to improve the World Bank from its current status as a "joke." Well, no. Shockingly enough, it turns out that the editor in chief of this publication, well-respected until the rise of bloggers who can't handle its truth-speaking ways, has absolutely no idea what he's talking about and is just recycling right-wing talking points. But don't take my word for it. Check out Sebastian Mallaby's column, as Sam Rosenfeld says "he's much meaner than I am." When Did American Feminists Stop Beating Muslim Women?Also via New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz, a recommendation that I read a "powerful critique" that "should be embarrassing to true feminists." It's by Christina Hoff Sommers in The Weekly Standard. The headline is "The Subjection of Islamic Women" but, obviously, neither Sommers nor the Standard nor Peretz actually cares about Islamic women. Rather, the subhead -- " And the fecklessness of American feminism" -- captures the point she's trying to make: If you go to the websites of major women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the National Council for Research on Women, or to women's centers at our major colleges and universities, you'll find them caught up with entirely other issues, seldom mentioning women in Islam. Ah, yes. Certainly no U.S. feminist groups have set up a Help Afghan Women site or anything of that nature. And, of course, American feminist leaders have famously failed to call on American women to "Stand With Our Sisters in Iran". Back in the real world, American feminists ignore the poor state of women's rights in Muslim countries in much the same way that Western human rights groups ignore North Korea -- only in the imagination of bad-faith conservative critics. The Republican Party, meanwhile, most often takes note of women's severely subordinate status in many Muslim countries when Republican presidents are hoping to collaborate with Islamist governments in order to block women's rights treaties. Web 2.0 Meets International RelationsThe internet allows for the creation of a lot of content that walks the line between "cool" and "dumb." For example, the PostGlobal Power Baromete from my good friends at WashingtonPost/NewsweekInteractive:
I've done this up just as a static image. On their actual page you can click where it says "supporting data" and find some supporting data. It's not clear, though, that the data is actually "data" at all, as opposed to just commentary. If the feature ever really took off, you might get a lot of people writing "wow! China's skyrocketing in the PostGlobal Power Barometer" which, in turn, would lead their rankings to go up even higher. Like Rain on Your Wedding DayI'll admit to feeling silly for what amounts to literally passing on talking points from the DSCC but speaking about Paul McNulty's resignation, Chuck Schumer gets it just right: "“It seems ironic that Paul McNulty who at least tried to level with the committee goes while Gonzales who stonewalled the committee is still in charge." As a bonus, this also works for today's 90s Nostalgia Blogging (N.B. this feature will end on Saturday when the Ultimate Nineties Alt Rock Party happens): I have a longstanding contention that the not-actually-ironic nature of the various purported examples of irony in the song is the ironic part and not just some kind of coincidence. May 15, 2007Acronym of the DayEric Martin speaks of "those seeking to re-animate SADDAM (Sunni Arab-Dominated Dictatorships Against the Mullahs)." UPDATE: Also see this. NiceJoe Lieberman raising money for Susan Collins. Der DolchstossFor those who prefer their rightwing-media-acting-like-nazis to be super-explicit, here's a recent Investor's Business Daily cartoon I saw thanks to Mark Kleiman:
Way back in May 2004 I had an early piece on the development of this theme in the conservative press and the conservative blogosphere. Peril!I have to say that I think it shows exceedingly poor judgment on Kirsten Gillibrand's part that she "has agreed to allow The New York Times to chronicle her first year in office." Michelle Cottle did a great piece way back in November 2004 about how Democrats' eagerness to please the press leads, semi-paradoxically, to them getting terrible press coverage. This stunt seems, broadly construed, to be part of that trend. Let's hope for her sake she constructed an explicit quid pro quo where the Times decided for some reason to throw ethics out the window and guarantee her glowing coverage in exchange for this unusual level of access. All of which is by way of setup for this hilarious passage: For her and other freshman lawmakers, it is a time of intense learning and sudden challenges, harried travel and nonstop work. But it is also a period of political peril: Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, has found that while veteran incumbents enjoy a re-election rate of 98 percent, the rate drops to less than 92 percent for first-term incumbents. Less than 92 percent, what is the world coming to! Next thing you know competitive elections might be a regular feature of American democracy. I Dream of NewtSomehow, rumors of a Newt Gingrich candidacy continue to circulate. I bet Democratic operatives go to bed every night saying a brief prayer that the Lord will, in His infinite wisdom, cause the GOP faithful to continue being discontented with the current crop of baby killers, Mormons, and McCain-who-they-don't-like-for-unclear-reasons and turn to the Newt in their hour of despair. Jonathan Singer remarks that Gingrich "is remarkably unpopular for someone who has been out of office for nearly a decade." It's worth driving this home. In August 2000 when Dick Gephardt was the Democratic Leader in the House of Representatives, 54 percent of voters told a CNN/Time poll they weren't familiar with him. By contrast, in CNN's November 2006 poll -- when Gingrich had held no political office for about eight years -- only 13 percent had never heard of him, and an additional 16 percent said they were unsure of how they felt about him. A larger number, 28 percent, took a favorable view of him. And a staggering 44 percent had an unfavorable view. An April 2007 CBS poll gave Gingrich a 16/43 favorable/unfavorable split. In March 2007 he got 29/48. A December 2006 NBC poll that took the unusual step of offering a "neutral" option produced a more favorable 26/35 split with 23 percent professing neutrality. As the best you can do, that's a terrible place to be starting a presidential campaign. And, of course, in 1996 the Democrats ran a very successful campaign whose main negative attack was that Bob Dole resembled Newt Gingrich in his political views, a case that's very easy to make when the candidate in question is, in fact, Newt Gingrich. Making Me Look BadHere I was complaining about the Suns' whining and then what does Robert Horry do but pull this stunt and make me look like an idiot: I don't see any excusing that. The line between a hard foul when the circumstances of the play warrants it and just assaulting someone out of frustration that your team's blown the game isn't all that fine. Contracting ManiaI'm not sure whether or not Shane Harris' Government Executive cover story on human resources problems in the intelligence community is readable by those members of the audience who aren't Atlantic Media Group employees (I'm still figuring things out; i.e., just this morning I learned that the firm includes Government Executive magazine) but it's got some pretty interesting stuff even for those of us who aren't government executives. He notes that the Intelligence Community has plenty of entry-level applicants and, therefore, quality early career people, and is also well-supplied with senior managers, but in the middle there's a gap: To fill the gap in the meantime, during wartime, the agencies have hired contractors in record numbers. The agencies have outsourced some of the most sensitive functions, including analysis, spying on foreign adversaries, prisoner interrogation and translation services. Worse, it turns out that the high level of demand for contractors is one of the causes of the gap: The federal intelligence community has become a place where the millennials learn spying tradecraft, obtain a coveted top-level security clearance and then bolt to contractors for heftier paychecks. This has become so common that intelligence observers now fear it could become the career path of choice - break into the private sector via the government. The out-contracting of public service has, it seems to me, been a pretty spectacular failure across an astoundingly broad range of different kinds of activities. Early PollingEverybody remembers to preface their analysis of current primary polling with something about how the numbers this far out don't mean very much. The cliché status of that insight, however, tends to make us forget how true it is. Check this stuff out from Pollster.com:
That's the primary last time. To make a long story short, national horserace polling data right up to the day of the Iowa Caucus had no informational value whatsoever about the outcome of the nomination race. That's not to say that the precise same post-Iowa bandwagon pattern is likely to repeat this year. It does, however, indicate that massive shifts of sentiment are possible (which is understandable, since the race contains a bunch of people I have basically warm feelings toward and I'm clearly not the only person who feels that way) right up until the last moment. Hot FuzzIf you haven't seen it, go. Some punk investigative reporter said it was disappointing, in which case he needs to learn a thing or two about expectations-management; it's great fun, probably not as good as Shaun of the Dead, was but certainly not in a way that made me wish I'd just stayed home and watched Shaun on DVD or anything. College For EveryoneJohn Edwards recently released his two-part "college for everyone" plan and it didn't seem like a very good idea to me, but I sort of wanted to see what people who knew what they were talking about thought. Erin Dillon from Education Sector thinks it doesn't seem like a very good idea: "I worry that this program would end up leaving out the students who need the most help, and inadvertently shift grant aid to students who tend to receive more in other forms of financial aid, like tax credits, loans, and merit-based institutional aid." I worry, too. Edwards' other thing, about helping people apply for existing financial aid channels, seems to be clearly a good plan. One of the hallmarks of Edwards' 2004 campaign was this kind of low-hanging policy fruit, delivering progressive results through better technocracy. It's been good to see him move toward embrace of more dramatic policy shifts, but also good to see that that hasn't involved ditching one of the worthier aspects of his earlier political persona. Yes, Hypocrisy MattersIt's no surprise to see that James Kirchick, assistant to New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz, shares his patron's passion for the cause of keeping Paul Wolfowitz in office at the World Bank. Kirchick says Wolfowitz's critics are making baseless charges: "As Jon Chait noted in his excellent Netroots article, liberals are increasingly adopting the 'no enemies on the left' strategy that the right has used so effectively for decades to police its own ranks . . . Wolfowitz's critics could care less about the fact that there is little to no evidence of wrongdoing. What they care about is that he was a Republican who was an architect of the Iraq War, which has no bearing on the good job he's done at the World Bank." A DilemmaConsequence-driven blogger that I am, I'm trying to think of a way to acknowledge Jerry Fallwell's death, thus proving that liberals aren't out-of-touch, without appearing to celebrate the man's passing, which might provoke a backlash. Solution: Go meta! Lesson: Irony and a wry tone can get you out of any jam. Commenters: GoNorman Podhoretz, "The Case for Bombing Iran." I need to run out for a bit and don't quite have the time to get my thoughts on this travesty together. Please have at it. Rudy: Still Likely to FailWith regard to some recent dust-ups, I fall into the "enormous respect for Thomas Edsall" camp, but I've found myself tending to disagree with a lot of his more recent work. For example, he has the current cover story in The New Republic, arguing that Giuliani can, too, win the GOP nomination as a pro-choice, pro-gay candidate largely because Republican primary voters don't care about that stuff anymore: SuspensionsOkay, the Spurs are officially a dirty team and David Stern needs to learn about a thing we like to call "common sense." Robert Horry gets a two game suspension, but Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw are both out for one game. Seeing as how the Suns normally play an eight man rotation, it'll be interesting to see how Mike D'Antoni plays it. When Kurt Thomas gets fouls or needs a break, I guess the Pat Burke era begins? UPDATE: Wise words from Henry Abbott. Headline of the DayThis is the sort of crap that makes The New York Sun an indispensible source of arch wingnuttery: "Sarkozy To Extend Prime Job To Known Anti-American". The article doesn't make it very clear, but I think headline refers to the fact that Hubert Védrine may or may not have been in talks with Sarkozy about becoming Foreign Minister, though it appears Védrine won't, in fact, become Foreign Minister. The real news here, though, is that Sarkozy appears to be wooing two different Socialists -- Védrine and Bernard Kouchner -- for some kind of foreign policy position, even though they're not only both Socialists, but on different ends of the foreign policy spectrum. The moral of the story would seem to be that Sarkozy doesn't have particularly strong feelings about what he wants to do in foreign affairs and is overwhelmingly interested in ways to strengthen his political position in hopes of pursuing domestic reform. We Agree, ThenJohn Hawkins at RightWingNews takes on allegations that the right is involved in perpetuating a Nazi-style "Stab in the Back" narrative about Iraq by perpetuating a Nazi-style "Stab in the Back" narrative. 90s Nostalgia BloggingIn many ways, I feel that Semisonic's "Closing Time" is the most perfectly generic alt rock hit of the nineties, released in 1999 just in time to sum up the decade and slam the door shut on the once promising phenomenon of post-punk breaking into the mainstream. I had a damn hard time remembering the name of the band: Be all that as it may, I find this weirdly hilarious: When Minneapolis trio Semisonic began to work on their new album, All About Chemistry, the band found themselves in an unfamiliar position: they were no longer upstarts, underdogs or indie rockers. Instead they had a hit song and sales of two million albums worldwide to follow up. Indeed. Um...... so, I didn't pay attention to former Deputy AG Comey's testimony until just now. This is a hell of a story, somehow managing to make what we already knew about the crazily illegal domestic surveillance initiative even more crazy. It's really bizarre that this gang is so awful that John Ashcroft manages to emerge as one of the major good guys, but I said we'd miss him when he resigned. May 16, 2007Rudy's AppealI think The New York Times' writeup of the big GOP debate sort of misses the real lead. On the recommendation of my roommates who caught it live, I checked out the relevant section. Ron Paul made a kind of "blowback" argument that America's aggressive global military posture is part of the problem of global terrorism, rather than part of the solution. Then: “May I comment on that?” Mr. Giuliani said, looking grim. “That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.” Giuliani didn't just look "grim," he looked genuinely outraged. And it was more like he was interrupted by wild cheers and thunderous applause. I still think I'm right and the cultural issues and so forth will doom Giuliani, but if you want the best case that I'm wrong you need to watch this clip. Sort of like Zell Miller's 2004 Convention speech it tapped directly in to the irrationalist brand of nationalism that increasingly motivates the contemporary GOP base. Problems SolvedWell, now that we have our "war czar", I bet all our country's national security problems are solved. Just kidding. The real problem here is that if we had a functional interagency process at the NSC, this would be unnecessary. Meanwhile, the sort of leadership qualities on the part of the president and the other key players that could, in theory, make the "czar" concept work just happen to be the exact same ones that could make the NSC process work properly. In short, this is either futile or unnecessary, and I'd bet heavily on futile. Antifeminists and Islamic WomenJ. Goodrich offers up a bit more on Christina Hoff Sommers' baseless accusations that American feminists don't care about Islamic women: Sommers is a a very fascinating example of someone who has not herself written a long book about the situation of women in Islamic countries. She found it more important to write books intended at destroying feminism so that there would then be nobody at all to help those women. Here's even more from Garance Franke-Ruta. I'll also note for the record that when I took a women's studies class in college, the professor -- about as much of an out-of-touch academic cultural theorist as you'll ever find -- Afsaneh Najmabadi was an Iranian woman who, not surprisingly, had noted that Islamist regimes tend to implement woman-unfriendly policies. But, of course, this still came down to the fact that one can't straightforwardly read conclusions like "we should bomb Iran" or "we should sanction Syria" or "we should back an Ethiopian effort to overthrow the de facto government of Somalia" off the reality that "many women in Muslim countries are treated poorly." The alternative proffered by professional anti-feminists like Sommers -- that American feminists should blindly back Republican Party foreign policy -- isn't even a remotely serious effort to grapple with the legitimately difficult question of how people in the west can engage constructively with these issues. Things I Did Not KnowMichelle Goldberg gives some Jerry Falwell backstory: The notion of church/state separation, now widely regarded by Republicans as part of a devious war against Christianity, was a widely shared principle. Falwell himself once denounced preachers who got involved in governance, though not out of devotion to a secular republic: As a committed segregationist, he decried the work of Martin Luther King Jr, saying, "Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to be soul winners." Classy. The issue of whether or not the old Falwell line on this is correct is an interesting one. As a political matter, I don't really have an objection to religious leaders deciding their moral commitments require them to adopt political commitments as well; it seems like a natural enough thing to do. From the standpoint of religious denominations themselves, though, I suspect that Falwell was offering good pragmatic advice. Religious leaders who involve themselves unduly in political matters become essentially politicians or activist/agitators, two social roles that are much less highly regarded than is the role of religious leader. At a minimum, the upshot is that religious interventions into political matters are most likely to be effective when they're relatively rare. The rise of people like Ralph Reed who just are political operatives (lobbyists, even!) peddling some kind of "religion" schtick is the logic end of the process -- like a lot of operatives, he has some influence and power, but no meaningful moral or religious authority in the eyes of anyone who doesn't already agree with what he's saying. McCain on Treason and White SupremacyAn absolutely astounding exchange: MR. GOLER: In 2000, sir, you said yes. You have since called that one of your worst examples of political cowardice. That flag is still flying in front of the Statehouse. Should it come down? That's just pathetic, as was McCain bizarre answer about why he now supports extending tax cuts he didn't favor enacting. Double Skim Gitmo LatteWhat was up with Mitt Romney promising to "double" Gitmo -- I mean, what does that even mean? I think it's weird that this kind of moment where a candidate for the presidency reveals that he has no clue as to what he's talking about with regard to a high-profile, controversial national security issue doesn't count as a "gaffe." Maybe if he'd sighed too much or something. The PlanMarc Stein reports: Suns coach Mike D'Antoni will likely start James Jones or Barbosa in Stoudemire's place, with an outside shot that little-used Jalen Rose or Pat Burke plays some emergency minutes in the frontcourt. It'll be the first game Stoudemire has missed this season in his comeback. Okay. Kurt Thomas, Shawn Marion, James Jones, Raja Bell, and Steve Nash is a perfectly viable starting five. Then you have Barbosa off the bench. But this seems to imply that if Kurt Thomas needs to sit because guarding Tim Duncan leads to fatigue or foul trouble, that D'Antoni thinks he can use Marion to guard Duncan. Has he done that in the past? Phoenix has played without Amare before, but the incredible versatility of Boris Diaw was, it seems to me, key to making it work as well as it did. Trip ShakespearJohn Holbo has a fascinating follow-up to yesterday's post on Semisonic. Where's My Condo?There are new condos in every direction from my house, and even more under-construction condos. Along with that, I keep reading stories about condo oversupply throughout the region. Thus, I keep waiting hopefully for the inevitable crash and my opportunity to snap one up at bargain-basement prices and it keeps . . . not happening. I'm frustrated. Burst, bubble, burst! Also: The Sky Is BlueJonah Goldberg deploys the reality-proof shield known as media bias: The liberal media loves — loves! — casting evangelicals as sexually hung up prudes. It should not detract from the basic unfairness of this bias to also concede that some evangelical leaders have supplied their enemies with ample ammo in this regard. Sorry, no. The media, famously, doesn't have a really solid grasp on the nuances of Christian theology and arguably errs by tending to use the term "Evangelical" as synonymous with "sexually hung-up Protestant prude" rather than offer a more doctrinally correct interpretation, but it's simply true that the evangelical Christians who want gays back in the closet, who have their daughters sign virginity pledges, who push abstinence only sex education, etc., etc., etc. are sexually hung-up prudes. It's not an "unfair bias" that Christian Right leaders fuel with "ammunition" -- the essence of the Christian Right political program is increased government repression of human sexuality. This would be like Goldberg saying that the media has this weird habit of portraying environmental groups as obsessed with their loathing of pollution. Bring on the CoupDaniel Mitchell, who seems to be a bottomless pit of crazy blog posts, recommends an item by Kevin Hassett (yes that Kevin Hassett) making the case that dictatorships outperform democracies economically because they're "not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state." The chart tells a striking story: the countries that are economically and politically free are underperforming the countries that are economically but not politically free. For example, unfree China had a growth rate of 9.5 percent from 2001 to 2005. But China was not the whole story—Malaysia’s GDP grew 9.5 percent from 1991 to 1995, Singapore’s GDP grew 6.4 percent from 1996 to 2000, and Russia’s grew 6.1 percent from 2001 to 2005. In fact, the story the chart tells is that the set of economically and politically free countries is a set heavily weighted to very rich countries, whereas the other set is weighted to substantially poorer ones. Strikingly Hassett even recognizes the glaring flaw in his argument, acknowledging that "nearly all of the unfree nations are developing countries" which "grow faster, at least for a while, than mature nations." But he decided to write the column anyway! Chipping AwayAmazon to sell non-DRM files from EMI. I expect we'll see that the other major labels won't be able to hold out for very long against consumers' desire to legally acquire music files that are as flexible as the ones you can illegally obtain. May 17, 2007Close!Oh, man, Phoenix's short rotation wound up being way less ineffective than I would have guessed. That said, unexpectedly good wasn't good enough. It kind of sucks that San Antonio's probably going to win the series now. It does, however, raise a question about the Jazz. Did we just watch them win an impressive series against an impressive Golden State team? Or did we just watch them beat an 8 seed and now we're looking forward to a walkover? Also: Cavs-Nets is boring! Independent Thinking!Um . . . dare I point out that I think Andrew's being a bit unfair to George Bush and Karl Rove in seeming to hold them responsible for these events? What happened is bad, but there are assholes all over the place and were even before the 2000 election. VacationHere's a graph I stole from Ezra:
The U.S., it seems, isn't that little bar on the right hand side showing ten days of paid leave and zero paid holidays. That bar's Japan. The U.S. is to the right of Japan -- i.e., blank -- a country with no legislatively mandated vacation time whatsoever. Unlike most other rightwing economic policies it at least is clear that this does boost GDP (people work more, more stuff gets made) but seemingly at the cost of making it increasingly hard for many people to find time to spend with their families. On the other hand, I will agree that Finland may have taken things too far in the other direction. More on HassettGood comments from Archit on AEI economics honcho Kevin Hassett's plan to boost growth by ending democracy: Do these people actually think about what they are saying? Mitchell says that the problem is democracy's "enabling people to seize unearned wealth through the political process." As opposed to dictatorships? And Hassett starts with the problem of democracy not reflecting popular preference and concludes that dictatorship is the answer. Complete non sequitors abound. I know for a fact that Cato employs people smarter than Mitchell, and I've heard rumors of one or two good apples at Heritage. RichardsonmaniaI attended a big speech by Bill Richardson, the unknown candidate, this morning where he put forward an extremely ambitious energy and climate change agenda that, I believe, will also be released in greater detail on his website soon. I also got a chance to talk to Richardson a bit before the speech and, of course, the trick with something like that is that almost all even moderately successful politicians are pretty charismatic, but nonetheless he seemed very impressive. I particularly liked his insistence on the idea that most people underplay the role of transportation and land use policy in the energy puzzle. This was appealing because it's what I already thought, but Richardson said it totally unprompted, and it's true. More fuel efficiency is good, and more renewable energy is also good, but we're also going to need people to drive less. And that's going to mean that we'll need policies that make it realistic for people to do so -- mass-transit, but also transit-friendly, high-density constructions. At any rate, if you've been following this blog you'll know I'm not really much of an environmentalist in my gut. But when you look at it, whatever's in your gut, it'd still be really nice for the world not to perish in cataclysmic climate change in the 2060s and that's going to require dramatic policies. Richardson's ambition on this score is particularly noteworthy because he isn't much of a lefty on domestic issues generally -- he had a pretty conservative, business-friendly record in New Mexico. That leaves his priorities clear. He told reporters after the speech that on his first day in office the troops are coming out of Iraq (presumably, in practice, this would take more than one day to execute) and then on the second the energy mandates start coming down. The Anti-War GOPVia Rod Dreher, this 1956 Eisenhower campaign ad aimed at positioning Ike's credentials as the candidate of peace, the guy who ended the Korean War and who won't get the country into a new one: It's an interesting counterpoint to the widespread idea that the more hawkish candidate always wins or that the United States is just an inherently militaristic country. On pretty much any metric you can imagine, the country is more culturally liberal than it was in 1956, and the objective threat level today is way lower than it was 50 years ago. For whatever reason, though, political debate is stuck in a really cramped kind of nationalism. Majority Minority?The news that DC is shifting from blac k majority to black plurality (via Sommer Mathis) is kind of interesting, but further down they get onto a more intriguing issue, the oft-heard claim that the USA will be "majority-minority" (i.e., plurality white rather than mostly white) by 2040: But Lang questions whether the term "minority" will be defined the same way by then. Nearly 2 percent of the population is identified as multiracial, he noted. And that percentage is likely to rise with intermarriage among races and ethnic groups. The notion of what is "white" is also likely to shift as it has since the 1900s, when Southern and Eastern Europeans were not counted as white. Interestingly, I knew the history of shifting definitions of whiteness but managed to never consider the possibility that it might further shift in the future. But, of course, when you think about it that makes a lot of sense. Pourquoi Blogger?The decision to tackle the timeless question, pourquoi blogger? ("why blog?") was, naturally, what drew my interest in this French magazine for teen girls. The magazine itself, however, turns out to interestingly demonstrate that French efforts to roll back franglais don't seem to be faring very well with the younger generation. Est-ce que je suis une party girl? seems like a wildly unnecessary anglicism.
Similarly, the blog article itself runs in the magazine's "Fun Coach" department. Even worse, the TOC page repeatedly uses the word "love" (as in "LOVE SEX: Comment vous faire désirer" on page 88) instead of the familiar-even-to-Americans "amour." Intriguingly, based on the magazine France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers. Minority ReportA reader on our majority-minority future: See George Yancey's book Who Is White?: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. This sparked a host of articles when it came out in 2005; the meme has been fairly present among demographers and academic sociologists. This sounds somewhat depressingly plausible to me -- I'll have to read the book. Corn EthanolKevin Drum: "As practically everyone except politicians pandering their way through Iowa knows, corn ethanol is a boondoggle. It doesn't do much to reduce oil use, it doesn't do much for the environment, and it doesn't do much for your food bill. All it does is make corn farmers happy." Indeed. In a lot of ways, the most impressive thing about Bill Richardson's energy speech is that he managed to get through the whole thing without mentioning ethanol. The Energy Security MythRounding out my day of energy policy, I also went to a small lunch event at Cato where Eugene Gholz talked about his paper (with Daryl Press) on "Energy Alarmism: The Myths That Make Americans Worry about Oil" Many Americans have lost confidence in their country's "energy security" over the past several years. Because the United States is a net oil importer, and a substantial one at that, concerns about energy security naturally raise foreign policy questions. Some foreign policy analysts fear that dwindling global oil reserves are increasingly concentrated in politically unstable regions, and they call for increased U.S. efforts to stabilize—or, alternatively, democratize—the politically tumultuous oil-producing regions. Others allege that China is pursuing a strategy to "lock up" the world's remaining oil supplies through long-term purchase agreements and aggressive diplomacy, so they counsel that the United States outmaneuver Beijing in the "geopolitics of oil." Finally, many analysts suggest that even the "normal" political disruptions that occasionally occur in oil-producing regions (e.g., occasional wars and revolutions) hurt Americans by disrupting supply and creating price spikes. U.S. military forces, those analysts claim, are needed to enhance peace and stability in crucial oil-producing regions, particularly the Persian Gulf. . . . I find this thesis convincing, but I don't think it really gets to the heart of the matter, which doesn't have to do with the "stability" of the Persian Gulf as much as it does with the fear that the Gulf's oil reserves might be politically unified. The US didn't want Iran to conquer Iraq, the US didn't want Iraq to conquer Kuwait, and now the US is concerned about a "Shiite crescent." When I brought this up Gholz indicated that this fear is basically unrealistic. That, in turn, I agree with. Still, the upshot is that the real debate in this regard turns on an empirical point about the actual present-day configuration of the Persian Gulf region rather than a theoretical claim about energy security. UPDATE: "Basically unrealistic," I should say, at the moment. Obviously, Saddam Hussein did in fact conquer Kuwait in the not-too-distant past and could quite plausibly have overrun Saudi Arabia had the Saudis not gotten foreign military backing. This Article Does Not ExistSince Katha Pollitt is a feminist, and feminists don't care about women in the Muslim world, it stands to reason that her new column on the fate of Iraqi women does not, in fact, exist. This comes via Ann Friedman who must also not exist. Back in the U.S.S.R.Oy. It seems that Bernard Lewis has decided the United States could learn a thing or two about the need for brutal measures against Muslims from the example of the Soviet Union: During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. Americans, by contrast, were undermined by softie liberals, journalists, etc., etc., etc. Appeasement, blah blah. Lewis' argument, not surprisingly, has some problems in terms of accurately describing Soviet posture in the Middle East. The other thing, though, is Russia has been deploying brutal measures against subjugated Muslim populations for at least two hundred years. The Czars fought Muslim guerillas in the Caucasus, the Soviets fought Muslim guerillas in the Caucasus, and Vladimir Putin has done the same thing. Relations between Russians and the Muslims who live to the south of the Russians is a big, long, giant example of Lewis-favored conservative policy prescriptions not working -- the fighting just keeps going on and on and on and on. Immigration DealI'm open to changing my mind, but on first glance this seems like a bad idea to me. The guest worker program is just way too big. There's a complicated balance of considerations governing immigration policy, but guest workers have no merits whatsoever and this plan involves a veritable shitload of them. May 18, 2007France Hearts JewsBernard Chazelle, guesting at Tony Karon's place, has some interesting data about France and the Jews: Sarko’s Jewish roots are irrelevant. His strong support among Sephardic Jews reflect his tough stance against the antisemitic violence that flared up during the second Intifada. Many Sephardim live near or in the “hottest” banlieues and suffered the brunt of Muslim anti-Jewish hostility. Although this new form of European antisemitism has since declined, it would be tragic to dismiss it. To his credit, Sarkozy did not. Some perspective might be useful, however. Sharon’s attempts to portray France as an antisemitic country was silly pandering. The 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey asked the question: “Do you have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Jews?” The answer was “yes” for 86% in France, 77% in the US, and 74% in Britain (the figure for that staunch Israeli ally, Turkey, was 15%). More interesting, among Muslim respondents, the answer was “yes” for 71% in France but only 32% in Britain (even though the UK has far fewer Arab Muslims). It would appear, therefore, that the antisemitic violence is hardly representative of French Muslim society as a whole. Certainly not the impression one gets from the press coverage. Even More RichardsonIf you want to read commentary on the Richardson energy speech from someone who really knows what he's talking about, check out this analysis from Dave Roberts at Grist: No politician from either party has put forward a plan that comes closer to being a realistic response to the energy shortages and climate chaos heading our way. Good for him. Incidentally, I don't really think it behooves environmentalists to pre-emptively concede things like "I don't think Richardson has much of a chance at the presidency" when discussing this plan. His business friendly reputation gives him a ton of fundraising potential, "first Hispanic president" ought to stand alongside "first black president" and "first woman president" as an exciting possibility, he's experienced, he's a very popular governor of a swing state, etc. etc. etc. If folks don't want to try to push him into the ranks of serious consideration because they don't particularly care for the idea of a Richardson Administration, that's fair enough. But if global warming is a problem that warrants as much dramatic actions as environmentalists seem to think it does, then I think environmentalists should be trying to convince me that they're right about national priorities and I should vote for Richardson. Happy Birthday To MeI'm 26! This is me looking tired this morning:
I have this fear that I've now aged out of the enfant terrible demographic. Jamie Kirchick's even seems to be publishing good articles these days. What? Cronyism? Here?Karen Rutzick reports on a more mid-level manifestation of the corruption and cronyism run rampant in Bush's Washington: In April, the national nonprofit advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility raised the alarm on McGinley, an attorney at the Office of Special Counsel, accusing her of burrowing in. Rutzick goes on to note that there is, naturally enough, another side to the story. It's a story I might even consider believing did not the bad version of the story so perfectly fit the long-established pattern of Republican behavior. PSAMegan McArdle's blog is experiencing some mysterious technical problems, and has been temporarily relocated here. The Case Against Porkbusting
This kind of thing is why people are always reaching for the name "Ramesh Ponnuru" when asked to name conservative pundits worth reading. As Scott Lemieux says "this is the central purpose of the Porkbusters campaign: to make difficult choices magically disappear, especially where the Iraq War is concerned." As Ponnuru points out, the world simply doesn't work like that. Conservatives either want to cut some major programs with substantial constituencies, or else they don't really want to cut spending -- pork is neither here nor there in big picture budgetary terms. Civil WarHere's a post by New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz mocking the Palestinians for the current Fatah-Hamas fighting through which they're suffering. He followed that up with a second post on the topic, and followed that one up with a third. In case you hadn't gotten the point, though, he made it four in a row on the topic. Gone missing from this analysis is any recognition of the extent to which the current terrible situation is the result of stupid American policy choices. The dynamic on the US-Israeli side has become one of self-fulfilling prophesies, where the failure of ham-handed policy initiatives to produce the desired Palestinian quisling regime becomes the reason for more ham-handed initiatives whose failure then becomes yet another reason there can be no serious push for peace. More ImmigrationI continue to be skeptical about this deal. One issue is Daniel Davies' dictum that "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance". This is applicable to, say, this RNC press release lauding the bill: No Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants: Illegal immigrants who come out of the shadows will be given probationary status. Once the border security and enforcement benchmarks are met, they must pass a background check, remain employed, maintain a clean criminal record, pay a $1,000 fine, and receive a counterfeit-proof biometric card to apply for a work visa or "Z visa." Some years later, these Z visa holders will be eligible to apply for a green card, but only after paying an additional $4,000 fine; completing accelerated English requirements; getting in line while the current backlog clears; returning to their home country to file their green card application; and demonstrating merit under the merit-based system. Now, look, this is an amnesty. But instead of being a well-designed amnesty, it's one where, as Atrios says, we're adding useless epicycles in order to enhance the plausibility of the "don't call it an amnesty" line. Much better to do the thing properly, even if that runs the risk of being forced to call a spade a spade. Dana Goldstein says the bill is "better than nothing" which it may well be, but that's not really a reason to support it. Insofar as the political dynamic produces a polarized choice between pro- and anti-immigration positions, the business community -- i.e. the constituency for guest worker programs -- is going to need to side with the pro-immigration view. There's no reason to accept a giant guest worker program as part of a political compromise. Things should move in the other direction. A skill-based immigration regime, which the bill apparently moves toward, is a good idea and should persuade us to get rid of the H-1B high-tech version of indentured sevitude and instead embrace the idea of letting high-skill workers immigrate legally through normal channels. Poor Paul...Steven Weisman offers us an all-too-sympathetic Paul Wolfowitz retrospective: Now, as friends and critics sort through the wreckage of Mr. Wolfowitz’s bank career, they wonder if it was doomed from the outset. Supporters say he arrived at the bank, a citadel of liberalism, from a four-year stint at the Pentagon, where he was an early champion of going to war with Iraq and left bearing its stigma. [...] But others say Mr. Wolfowitz repeated the mistakes he had made at the Pentagon: adopting a single-minded position on certain matters, refusing to entertain alternative views, marginalizing dissenters. Look, I have no doubt Wolfowitz was doomed from the state. But to comprehend his doomed-ness and what to make of it, one needs to step back. Why was he given the job in the first place? He had no obviously qualifications for it. He's read some neoliberal political commentary about the need for international development strategies to focus more on good governance. I've read that stuff, too. As have a lot of people. It's convincing stuff. But, genuinely, folks who've read it are a dime a dozen in this town. Do I get to run the World Bank? No. Wolfowitz had no genuine expertise in Africa, in development policy, in economics, in governance, or in any of the relevant fields. What he did have, that I lacked, was a track-record as a high-level political employee. It was a track-record marked by . . . spectacular failure. Failure so spectacular that George W. Bush decided Wolfowitz needed to be fired from his job because he was so incredibly bad at it. In order to fire him while minimizing feather-rumpling, he was dumped on the Bank, even though he had no relevant expertise and a long track-record of failure (think Team B) in his previous work. So, yes, he was doomed from the start. Boo-hoo. The Clinton CycleHere's the full-length version of Ari Berman's "Hillary, Inc." taking a good hard look at Senator Clinton's team of business-oriented advisors. Matt Stoller piles on further and adds "I hope that someone organizes a PAC or 527 against her brand of centrism, and points out the wild inconsistencies from the left." But now here's the rub. It's hard to make hay about, say, the Clinton campaign's ties to union-busting when large labor unions won't do it. As best I can tell, most labor people would prefer that she not be the nominee, but they're not going to do much of anything about it. They think, after all, that if she wins she'll need to be at least somewhat attentive to their concerns, but that if they tilt against her and she wins anyway, then they'll really be fucked. All of which is probably true, but of course also makes it much more likely that she'll win. Nation writers and progressive bloggers, sad to say, can't communicate this kind of thing to working-class voters in a particularly effective manner. Breaking News: Guerilla Tactics WorkI agree with Brian Beutler. David Brooks' discussion of insurgent tactics in Iraq ends up in a very strange place: If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one now is — trouble that this presidential campaign hasn’t even dealt with. But, look, the Iraqi insurgency is hardly the first group to demonstrate that it's possible to force foreign occupying armies to withdraw from territory where they're not wanted even if the occupying army is, in some sense, militarily superior. This has been a well-known feature of the world for decades, if not centuries. Indeed, it's worth pointing out that advocates of invading Iraq used to be perfectly aware that we wouldn't be able to use military force to trump public opinion. Remember that "greeted as liberators" business? Remember when the administration was denying there even was an insurgency? That's said that stuff for a reason. The contention was that we wouldn't need to fight a counterinsurgency campaign, not that we were prepared to fight and win one. Who Is Murray Waas?The story was juicy enough to prompt an inquiry from the House Judiciary Committee. In response, the Justice Department issued a letter taking aim at Waas’ piece. “The Attorney General was not told that he was a subject or target of the…investigation, nor did he believe himself to be,” the letter said, leaving Washington to choose between Waas’ credibility and that of the Bush Justice Department. The idea that a person would seriously write this in the course of an article that's supposed to make Murray Waas look bad should be taken as a sign that the author in question has gone insane. And, indeed, by all accounts I've heard the reason Erik Wemple decided to write a mind-bogglingly bad hit-piece on Waas is that the two of them are embroiled in a long-running feud of some sort. The resulting article is just shamefully bad. I don't like to use the word "fisking" but suffice it to say that the conclusion deserves extensive excerpting plus interstitial commentary: Better Joke NeededThis is pretty funny (albeit not as funny as the Democratic version) but I think the basketball joke falls flat this time around -- particularly on the "con" side. Do readers have better ideas? The Truth About the EnglishFor years, I assumed that every English person I heard speaking was incredibly intelligent. Then one day I realized it was just that English people speak with English accen |
